Help Not Wanted: Local Hiring Plans At 15-Year Low
From the Sacramento Bee:
Job outlook darkens in area
Employers in most fields say they'll be cautious on hiring, survey reports.
Sacramento's Protrades Connection ran as many as 100 tradespeople and laborers a day to local construction sites at this time last year. Now the demand has dwindled to 40 a day. "Construction is very down. Last year this time, everything was fantastic," said branch manager Jay Evans.
While the slowdown in residential building has received a fair amount of media coverage, a survey of quarterly employment trends released Monday shows that caution flags are being raised across all industries as the new year starts.
Nearly half of the 100 regional companies in the survey will not hire new employees in the first quarter of 2007, according to Sacramento Quarterly Employment Trends, an annual poll prepared for local employment agency Pacific Staffing.
About one in 10 area companies anticipates layoffs during the period, the survey found, as companies take into account high energy costs, economic uncertainty and the continued housing malaise.
...
[I]n a survey low, just 24 percent of companies said they plan to add to their work force in the first three months of 2007. That's the lowest level reported in the poll's 15-year history, lower even than in the days following 9/11, said Rick Reed, the market researcher who did the survey.
3 comments:
Real Estate malaise will spread to all parts of the Sacto economy, imho. Jobs, raw materials, major appliances, home improvement, mortgage companies and down to the local gardner will feel this crunch. Sacramento doesn't have an industry infrastructure that's broad enough to weather this one. The job pinch, the falling home prices, and huge discounts by big builders could force us into a recession that may last a long time.
I'd like to point out that about 6 mos. ago, many posters on this blog were predicting that the local economy was on the verge of collapse because RE agents, mortgage brokers, title ins employees, carpenters, tradespeople, etc., etc., were all losing their jobs because of the slowdown in home sales.
And yet, unemployment today is near record lows.
Real estate agents and mortgage brokers are paid on commission.
Alot of the carpenters were illegal and would not qualify for unemployment.
The figures are out of whack because alot of RE related people do not show up in unemployment figures.
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